I had a great time documenting the 2015 Edgy Art Competition which took place March 28th in Salado, TX. The Edgy Art Competition is a contest where invited artists make a theme-based work of art in just four hours. The event is free to attend; however, you can purchase tickets for a chance to win the work by your favorite artist. The competition winner is determined by patron votes and this year's winner was Aaron Gist.

I've been following Dan Travels on YouTube for quite a while now and I'm a huge fan of his channel. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to meet up with Dan as he was heading back to the east coast after a trip to Big Bend National Park. He was kind enough to grant me an interview and tour of the van which you can check out below.

Be sure to check out Dan's videos on his YouTube channel and let me know what you think about his stealth van design.

Last month I traveled to Hardy, AR, a beautiful town in the northeast corner of the state, to conduct interviews for my most recent project, "Ed and The Aberts." I had the good fortune to interview Ed Helvey, a self-described "location independent, digital nomad, serial entrepreneur, blogger and van-dweller," and the Abert family, John, Sharon and Angel (the pup), who are in the process of converting a cargo trailer into a custom RV, selling 90% of everything they own (including the house), and hitting the road, full-time, later this year. If you're interested, you can watch it here and find out more about how it was made below.

This was my first project using the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera (BMPCC) exclusively. Despite some minor technical issues, I was very pleased with the results. I used two lenses, a Canon L-Series 17-40mm f4 and a Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35mm f2.8. All of the audio was recorded through a Zoom H2 lined directly into the camera. The audio recorder was mounted on my homemade L-bracket for the handheld shots and mounted on a boom stand for the interviews. I used one, five-bulb fluorescent softbox for lighting the interviews and a small LED light on camera for some of the handheld shots. I edited in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 and color graded in DaVinci Resolve 11.

I transitioned to the BMPCC from Canon DSLR's (T2i, 60D, 7D) and it's a big improvement in image quality. My favorite attributes (compared to DSLR's) are image sharpness (RAZOR SHARP), dynamic range and the ability to record in ProRes 422 (HQ). The menu system is a little quirky but has been dramatically improved through recent firmware updates. It's not a camera for those who prefer a point-and-shoot, auto-mode approach; however, if you're comfortable shooting manual on a DSLR and you want to improve your image quality and give yourself more creative control in color grading, this is the camera for you.

I'm happy to report that Without Bound has recently passed the 40,000 view mark on YouTube and continues to receive generous social sharing and supportive comments from the online community.

One of the big surprises for me has been the interest from the online personal finance community. I hadn't considered that audience but in hindsight it makes perfect sense as they share many common interests with mobile dwellers. My top three common interests would be frugality, budgeting and debt elimination.